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Help kids to kick social media addiction

Alice Thomson

Tech entrepreneurs are tough when it comes to limiting their children’s time online so let’s set our own an example

When I interviewed Matt Hancock last week the minister in charge of digital strategy revealed that he did not allow his three children a smartphone or to play on the computer. What’s more, he leaves his own phone at the door when he comes home. One of the most ambitious men in cabinet, and the only one with his own app, is nevertheless happy to cut himself off from social media for hours at a time. “I can ring people back,” he says.

The philanthropist Melinda Gates told me the same. Her children don’t have smartphones and only use a computer in the kitchen. Her husband Bill, the Microsoft co-founder, spends hours in his office reading books while everyone else is refreshing their homepage. The…